Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Writing: A Basic Skill All Graduates Need

This is the fourth and last in a series of blogs that I have written in response to a request from Bob Clary, Webucator’s community manager. The series concerns professional and business competencies that recent grads need. The competencies that I am covering are ethics, job search, interpersonal skills, and writing. This blog concerns writing.

It is important to write well, and it is not too late
to learn how. In 2013 CNBC reported
that one of the chief reasons that firms reject job applicants is poor writing.
CNBC adds: “In survey after survey, employers are complaining about job
candidates' inability to speak and write clearly.” USA
Today lists Siemens, UPS, BAE Systems, and Loyalty Factor as firms that
emphasize writing skill when they hire recent grads. The USA Today article quotes the MetLife
Survey of the American Teacher (p. 147), which indicates that 97% of executives believe that the ability to write clearly and
persuasively is “absolutely essential” for a student to be ready for college
and a career.

Nevertheless, in 2003 the College Board’s
National Commission on Writing published a report entitled The
Neglected R: The Need for a Writing Revolution. The report notes that
only about 25% of students at grades 4, 8, and 12 are at the proficient level
of writing. That is, most high school grads “cannot produce writing at the high
levels of skill, maturity, and sophistication required in a complex, modern
economy.” Moreover, Jill Singleton Jackson finds in her 2003 doctoral
dissertation at the University of North Texas that a sample of master’s degree
students does not write better than high school seniors.

Three
steps are helpful to better writing: (1)
practice, (2) learning, and (3) observation.
The steps do not need to be followed in any order; rather, students and
graduates should integrate practice with learning.

Students
can practice by writing at least two 200-word letters to editors or posts to
blogs each week. I comment
onForbes , my
favorite business publication,and
I have my own blog at http:www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.
Having your own blog is an excellent way to practice writing if you post at
least two 200-word posts each week.

The second aspect of practice involves focusing on
grammar. Look up grammatical issues online and in textbooks. When you send a letter or post to a blog, try
to perfect your grammar and syntax by referring to grammar books. That leads to
learning. Learn further by reading a few
pages about grammar each week.The Chicago Manual of Style,English Grammar
for Dummies, Purdue's
Online Writing Lab, and
similar books and websites are excellent sources.

Third, you should
read every day. This
site posts two lists of great novels (one from critics and one from readers). Well-written business magazines such as Forbes
are also useful reading. The point is to observe how good writers write.

Common Writing Issues

I grade about 200 student papers per
year. The following are common writing
issues with which students grapple.

A. In regards to

In regards to is wrong. The following are right: With regard to,
In regard to,
As regards,
Regarding.

B. Semicolons

Several of my students have been grappling with
semicolons. They are simple. They only do three things. This essay is short and to
the point. Recall that independent clauses can stand as sentences.

Semicolons are used as follows:

(1) To join two independent clauses: I go to class; I learn grammar.

(2) To join lists in which commas are present in each item: To learn, I have
traveled to Midwood, Brooklyn; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Los Angeles,
California.

(3) To join complicated clauses that include commas: I love to study grammar,
my favorite; to do my writing assignments; and to read Hayek's and Hazlitt's
books.

Recently, about one third of my students
has misused would or could in their papers. I wish that would and could were easy to use. Making them easier is their limited
number of uses. If you commit the common uses of would to memory, you can limit yourself to those uses and so refine
your English writing. If I were you, I would not overuse the word would.

Here are five common uses of would:

(1) As the past tense of
"will": "You said that you would let me drive your Lamborghini
today."

(2) To express a polite request:
"I would like a Lamborghini please."

(3) To describe a repeated action in
the past: "When I was a lad, I would walk nine miles to school each day.
After school I would chop wood."

(5) To express an unreal conditional:
"If I were a millionaire, I would own a Lamborghini."

Would is not used for statements of
fact or general truth: "George Washington would be the first
president" is incorrect. It is also incorrect to write "Under
most human resource systems today pay equity would be permitted."

"Would" is used for unreal
situations; it is also used for situations that are conditioned upon unreal
situations or unreal circumstances: I wouldn't do that if I were you.

These are related to the second and
third conditional forms.

Zero or
present real conditionals are statements of fact,
generality or law. They state what you usually do. They use the present tense: When
I attend Professor Langbert's class, I sleep.

First (real)
present conditionals are statements of conditional fact.
They state the condition that makes a real future event possible and a
future real event contingent on a present action: If I attend Professor Langbert's
class, then I will sleep.

Second
(unreal) present conditionals
state an unreal or impossible condition to an unreal or impossible situation.
They express the present, but the present condition is expressed with the past
tense and the contingent event is expressed with would or could. In the second or unreal
conditional you use would to express a situation that
you don't think will happen: If I
never attended Langbert's class, then I would never sleep.

Third
conditionals describe an imaginary past and use
the past perfect to express the imaginary past condition and would plus the present perfect to express the unreal past situation that would have
resulted: If I had not enrolled in Langbert's class, then I would not have slept
this semester.

If you limit your uses of "would" to
unreal situations and conditionals, then you will avoid a common writing error.

D. Avoid unnecessary or extraneous
words like very, extremely, totally, and really. Avoid using the first person (in my opinion). Don’t insert phrases like I think that… If
you didn’t think it, you wouldn’t be writing it.

E. Check that the verb tense in each paragraph
does not change unless you have a specific reason.

Non-restrictive clauses add a little information: George Washington,
the first president, rode a white horse.

Restrictive clauses are central to the sentence's meaning: George
Washington the first president rode a white horse, but during a parade white
horses rode upon George Washington the bridge.

I. Do not use a comma to separate the
subject of the sentence from the verb. Do not use a comma to separate a dependent
or subordinate clause that ends a sentence unless it contrasts with or
contradicts the meaning of the rest of the sentence or is nonrestrictive.
When you inject nonessential remarks into a sentence, enclose them in
commas: , in his view, ; , as she remarked, . There should be
commas before and after the nonessential or parenthetical remark.

J. Check your sentences for independent
clauses, and if two or more are in a sentence, punctuate the linkage or
linkages correctly. An independent clause can be a sentence in its own
right. If there is more than one independent clause, then there are four potential
options for correct punctuation:

(1) Use a comma followed by a
coordinating conjunction. The coordinating conjunctions are FAN BOYS: for, and,
nor, but, or, yet, so.

(2) Use a semicolon.

(3) Use a semicolon followed by a
conjunctive adverb or adverbial phrase followed by a comma.

(4) Bite the bullet. Often, the best
option is a shorter sentence. Consider breaking the separate independent
clauses into separate sentences.

An Example of a run-on sentence, a
sentence that lacks proper linkage of independent clauses, is as follows:

Rudolph Valentino was a famous movie
star, he broke box office records and he broke many hearts.

Four alternative potential corrective
measures:

1) Rudolph Valentino was a famous
movie star, for he broke box office records, and he broke many hearts.

(2) Rudolph Valentino was a
famous movie star; he broke box office records; he broke many hearts.

(3) Rudolph Valentino was a famous
movie star; specifically, he broke box office records; also, he broke many
hearts.

(4) Rudolph Valentino was a famous
movie star. He broke box office records. He broke many hearts.

As revised, all four are grammatically
correct from a technical standpoint. Which is the most effective? I say
(4). Yet, students insist on long sentences. One time, I broke one sentence,
written by a senior, into six separate sentences.

K. Compound words

Students grapple with writing
compounds. For some compounds there is a single convention, and writing it
differently from the convention can be viewed as incorrect writing. For other
compounds there is disagreement, and you need to consult a style guide that you
use consistently. For example, mother-in-law is always hyphenated,
racetrack is always closed, and post office is always
open. Notice that the three ways to handle compound words are hyphenated
(part-time), closed (keyboard), and open (real estate, middle class). In other
cases the handling of prefixes and suffixes may be controversial, but you can
consult a style guide and consistently use the style guide's approach.

In deciding which form to use, the
first step is to consult a dictionary. This is true for words with
prefixes and suffixes if the prefix or suffix is frequently used. For
example, overeater is a closed compound word because Dictionary.com says
so (see: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/overeater?s=t)

I usually use the Unabridged Merriam-Webster Dictionary or Dictionary.com, which is
available for free on the Internet. If the word is not in the dictionary,
then you need to consult a style guide. The Chicago Manual of Style
(CMS) is a widely used style guide that is appropriate for business and
academia. I subscribe to it for $35 per year and can access it online at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html
. I also own the hard copy and, as well, several other style guides. A
style guide commonly used in business schools is the American Psychological
Association guide.

Happily, CMS's excellent
hyphenation table is available for free online at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/images/ch07_tab01.pdf
. It shows how to handle words with prefixes and suffixes as well as
many compounds. For example, a student may wish to write I am an
overthinker. The Microsoft spell checker does not accept overthinker,
but in the CMS list of words with prefixes it is evident that overthinker
rather than over thinker or over-thinker is the right form.
This is what the CMS hyphenation table shows:

Over
overmagnified, overshoes,
overconscientious

CMS consistently uses the prefix over with
a closed form.

L. Compound
Adjectives

If you are unsure of a compound's
form, you should look it up in a dictionary, and if it is not in the
dictionary, you should consult a style guide that you consistently use. There
is an additional issue: hyphenation of compound adjectives that precede nouns.
Note that when compound adjectives follow nouns they are not hyphenated.

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Mitchell Langbert

About Me

I have researched and written about employee benefit issues and in my previous life was a corporate benefits administrator. I am currently associate professor of business at Brooklyn College. I hold a Ph.D. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, an MBA from UCLA and an AB from Sarah Lawrence College. I am working on a project involving public policy. I blog on academic and political topics.